Monday, March 18, 2013

“People talk about the payroll, ‘Oh, gee, the payroll’s over $200 million,’” Colletti said Sunday in an interview with MLB.com at Camelback Ranch. “You know, we were at $90 million last year. You’re the Dodgers and you play in Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium, and you’ve got a chance to draw almost four million people a year. And you’ve got two great baseball cities in Boston and Philly, and their payrolls have been in the $170-$180 [million] range, with two smaller ballparks, too, two smaller areas. If that’s where they’re at and the Yankees are way up there, too, shouldn’t we be somewhere between the Yankees and those two clubs with our payroll, $190-$200[million]?

“If that’s where we were, if that’s where we should have been, is [an increase to over $200 million] a big deal? No, it’s not a big deal. The big deal to me is not that we’re at $200 [million] it’s that we were at $90 [million]. That’s the big deal. If it was $190 last year and we signed [Zack] Greinke and we went up to $210, is it a big deal? No.”

...“Some people like to learn only when it’s convenient,” Colletti says. “But what is important is what you learn when it’s inconvenient, when you have to fight through and deal with adversity. That’s when you really learn, I think.

“That’s really also when you learn about other people. I think our staff did great. Our people stayed in there. [Manager Don Mattingly] kept everybody focused on winning games. Even though our payroll kept shrinking, shrinking, shrinking and the Giants kept winning and their payroll kept going higher while ours kept going lower. We never complained about it, we just said, ‘Hey, our job is to figure out how to win today’s game.’

“We did the best we could. You can’t control results. The only thing you can control, and I ask this of everybody that works in baseball ops, is your own effort. If that’s pure, it that’s everything that everybody’s got, we’ll let the results come however they come.”

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The Dodgers are now an unholy incarnation of all that's bad of the Red Sox and Yankees aren't they. and it's not like their roster is THAT good for a 200 M one.

yeah, they kind of did a thing where they purposely traded for players whose teams thought they had no chance at being worth their salary because their performance had declined precipitously, and as a result the dodgers are now paying $75 million to carl crawford, hanley ramirez, adrian gonzalez and josh beckett and expecting those players to shoulder a large burden of the teams' offense/defense/pitching.

the issue here is that the dodgers will be lucky if these players perform at 80% of their peak, but even if they get that. they'll be paying them to perform at 120% of their peak.

the issue here is that the dodgers will be lucky if these players perform at 80% of their peak, but even if they get that. they'll be paying them to perform at 120% of their peak

Hanley and Beckett are being paid $15 mil. They don't need to be 7-8 WAR players to justify that. 80% of their peak (4-5 WAR) will do quite nicely. Crawford is an albatross absolutely, and Gonzalez may prove to be also. But Hanley and Josh are among the least of their worries.

But Hanley hasn't been anywhere close to his peak in ages. By b-r, he's been below average for the last 3 years (esp the last 2) but he's one of the players where bWAR and fWAR disagree most strongly. He's not a major worry because he's only got 2/$31 left but he's likely to be a waste of money while he's there. Gonzalez meanwhile was worth 3.2 WAR last year and is just one year removed from his peak. It remains to be seen if last year was just a fluke down year but even if he just repeats 2012, he's no bigger a waste than Hanley is likely to be. He's not (likely) a 2013 problem, he's a problem because he's got another 6 years to go.

Guess I'm going to have to make some adjustments, as a fan of the team that now has the 2nd highest payroll in MLB. I'm OK with my favorite team spending more than 28 other MLB teams, but I believe I'm supposed to be OUTRAGED that one team spends more. Do I have that right, Red Sox fans?

Wow, I love that album cover so much I actually want to marry it. Was there really a time in American history when it was normal for party guests to break out the trombone and trumpet in the middle of the living room? I was born too late!